Since the beginning of the month there have been rolling blackouts throughout Ukraine, as we struggle to deal with the ramifications of Russia’s invasion. Today, for example, the power has been out for two hours, every two hours. And while we do have power, the other half of the city is turned off.
If this is what we need to do to make sure we have enough power later this winter when things get cold, so be it. But the government has failed to communicate this to the people, and has failed to help the people feel empowered, and responsible.
Instead, we are working against the outages. Whenever the power is on, I’m charging up my laptop and phone so that the battery will last through the outage. When the power and internet are down at home, I’ll find a cafe where they are working. For the most part I’m draining as much electricity as I would otherwise.
When the power is on, we are all using the elevator instead of the stairs, and we’ve got lights in the stairwells that no one is using. When the power is off, I’m frustrated that they have lights on across the street. Of course I don’t bother to check if their lights go out when mine go on.
What the government needs to do is spend a little creativity to communicate this important issue to the people, and use some gamification to give the people control over what is happening.
For example, what if the rule was that there would only be power outages when a city exceeded their target power-usage on the previous day? But if we stayed under the limit there would be no need to turn out the lights?
There could also be a competition between oblasts. Wherever they are using the least amount of watts-per-person, they get to keep their lights on.
Here’s a quick mock-up of a site that would help to unify the people. Compared to what we actually have.
We tried something similar at 7E when struggling with constant tardiness to the morning meeting. We gave the team 10 “health-points”, and each time someone was late we removed one point. We agreed that when we dropped to zero health, we would move the morning meeting one hour earlier. Instead of a punishment coming down from management, the fate of the meeting was up to the team. Had we just moved the meeting earlier or later without discussion, people would probably keep being late for the new time. Instead, we are still hanging on with a couple health points left.
A little gamification goes a long way. It empowers people, and challenges them to rise to the occasion.
Well written post and I agree wholeheartedly. When are you running for office? Oh right, I can’t vote anyways 🙁
I’d be happy with just a published schedule of outages if nothing else. This would encourage me personally to do something power independent during that time period since I knew it was going to happen and I planned for it to happen. As it is right now, the schedule is so erratic, my work gets interrupted and thus I feel a sense of panic as I have deadlines to meet which have now been suddenly moved.